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The Dragon-Blooded
The so-called “dragon-bloods” have ruled creation in some form or another for the last two-thousand years or so. The Scarlet Realm is home to the richest, most powerful, and most feared dynasty in the second age; and it's legions, great houses, secret police, and prominent adherence to the immaculate faith keeps not only themselves in-line, but many countries and nation-states in the thresholds too. The Realm had been stable and fearless for over seven-hundred-and-fifty years, but their esteemed empress has just recently disappeared. The timing couldn't have been worse, because the solars have just started returning too. The country is now teetering on the edge of a civil war! Mechanically, the terrestrials are the simplest of the exalt-types. They don't have any especially crazy super-powers or new emotional attributes, but that also means that there's fewer rules to keep track of with them. If you're new to the game then I'd suggest running (or playing in) a dragon-blooded game first so you can get a nice taste and feel for the system. Common Traits All dragon-bloods have the following traits for free: Caste Traits Dragon-bloods choose one of the five following caste traits for free. Within each caste, a terrestrial gets a special power and may choose 5 spheres from a list of 6. As with traits, the first in the list is required; but the rest can be chosen for customizability. Terrestrial Miracles As mentioned in the Essence section, each exalt type has a few extra unique uses for their Essence attribute. For the dragon-bloods, they are the following: Blessing — Ob 3 See BWG pg 524. Dragon-bloods were the foot soldiers of The Great Primordial War. Their ability to magically help one another is widely renowned. Though they cannot Bless abilities that they do not themselves know, they can still Bless objects. Marginal successes may be spent to exponentially increase the number of recipients of the Blessing, but the bonus is always +1D and only lasts for one test. Like the common exalted miracles, Blessings do require mantras to be used. The next two miracles do not: Elemental Guidance — Ob 5 See BWG pg 525. The trees and the rivers know many secrets; the soil remembers ancient battles; the sky has carried all manner of things; and flames may eat swiftly but they savour the taste. This miracle can be used to uncover pathways in a more literal sense or to reveal information about the world that only the elements would be capable of hiding. Elemental Kinetics — Ob 1-10 Using their elemental spheres of influence, the terrestrials can each perform some variant of elemental manipulation. The Ob should be set by the `Natural Effects Scale` (BWG pg 520). E.g. Ob 1 — a wind that kicks up dust, Ob 5 — wind strong enough to damage houses. Margin of success can be spent to linearly bump the effect further up the scale, if you so desire. The proper names of these powers if you care to use them are Geokinesis (earth), Aerokinesis (air), Dasokinesis (wood), Pyrokinesis (fire), and Hydrokinesis (water). The Maelstrom Once a dragon-blood’s anima is flaring, they can begin to use their kinetic power to cause direct damage. This is the only Essence ability that can do this. The base Power of such an attack is always equal to half your Essence exponent, the base VA is 0. Decide how much bonus Power and bonus VA you want; 1 plus the sum of these values gives the Ob. Marginal successes may only be spent to increase the DoF roll, as per the usual rules. WL = Longest , Range = Pistol. You can get quite creative with the descriptions for of this power. If you’re an Air-aspect, for example, a Power +1 and VA +0 attack would be Ob 2 and might just be a sharp buffet of wind: a quick invisible punch. Weras a Power +2 and VA +5 would be Ob 8 and might take the form of a lightning bolt! A similar attack for a Water-aspect might mean filling your opponent’s lungs with water, attempting to drown them on land. Note: A great source of inspiration for these effects comes from Nickelodeon’s fantastic series, `Avatar: The Last Airbender`. Dilution (The Great Curse) The power of the terrestrials is the only among the exalt-types that is naturally hereditary. There was a time when all the children of a dragon-blood would also be dragon-blooded, but the primordial death curse pronounced at the end of The War affected the terrestrials in a slow and wasting way. While much is done to postpone it, with complex matchmaking charts and marriages in the Realm to keep bloodlines strong and dynasties thriving; the dragon-bloods will eventually cease to exist. These traits depend on when you exalted as a dragon-blood. Like caste traits, each terrestrial only has one. (For convenience they may be parenthesized onto your `Diluted` trait). Breeding Though the main use-case for these traits is quite unlikely to come up in a usual game of Exalted Wheel, they are important enough to want to have properly defined mechanics should the situation ever arise. If dragon-blooded characters want to have children then you can use the traits in tandem with each other: Roll one of their chances first, and roll the second chance only if the first failed. This means that two pure-bloods mating, for example, have about a 7-in-9 chance of producing a dragon-blooded heir. Note: Due to generations of dilute blood mixing through various human populations, every mannish mortal in the game has an exceedingly low chance of producing a dragon-blooded heir (about 1-in-10,000). Though there are some pockets of Creation where this chance may be higher or lower, for example in the Realm it's probably closer to 1-in-5,000.